


Lights

by vaguely_concerned



Series: Scoundrels and Thieves 'verse [10]
Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: First Time, M/M, young mchanzo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-10
Updated: 2016-09-10
Packaged: 2018-08-14 06:30:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,445
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8002027
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vaguely_concerned/pseuds/vaguely_concerned
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jesse has never worked with a partner before.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lights

**Author's Note:**

> Set soon after ‘We gotta stop meeting like this’.

So this was it. End of the line. The grim reaper had finally looked up from whatever it was he’d been messing around with these last twenty years and noticed he’d missed a lifetime of appointments. Jesse's lifetime, anyway. He was a dead man, he just hadn’t stopped kicking yet.

Well, Jesse mused as he dodged another shot and threw himself to the concrete floor, at least he was definitely going out with a bang and not a whimper. Lots of bangs. And okay, maybe one whimper, he’d landed all wrong on his arm, but mostly bangs. He stumbled into cover behind some crates and gasped in a few breaths. The gunshots echoed between the walls of the giant warehouse, pelting against his ears like the ghosts of bullets.

It had been a setup. Of course. Why wouldn’t it be.

He sneaked a glance from behind the crate and simply ascertained what he already knew: there were ten of them and one of him, and while math had never been his strongest subject he didn’t need that sum underlined twice to know that he was _screwed_.

All that and he wouldn’t even get to smoke one last cigarette. Even the hangman would’ve given him that much.

He reloaded; his hands didn’t shake. He’d always known it would end something like this. Everyone made mistakes, and it just so happened that this would be his last. It was almost a relief, really. Did away with the suspense. The abandoned warehouse was vast enough that the high, dark expanse of the ceiling made him feel like he was standing under a starless sky and he was eerily calm, zen-like, because the world had been stripped to the bone and there was only one thing he could do now: take as many of these bastards with him as he could.

He should have thought ahead and invested in a pocket watch that played a sweet little ditty - not that any of these goons were likely to get the reference, and besides he didn’t have a partner to barge in at the last moment to make it a fair fight, but still. It would have made him feel a little better about the whole thing, was all. Style points probably didn’t matter in a potential afterlife, but there was such a thing as self respect.

Their footsteps were getting closer. He shut his eyes and lined it all up in his head. Six bullets. He could get six of them if he was quick enough.

… he wondered how long it would be before Hanzo realized something was wrong, that Jesse wasn’t going to pick up anymore if he called, and it was a lurch of pain through his numbed nerves, wrenching him open in a way he hadn’t expected. In hindsight all his reasons for not telling him that…

Well. They all seemed so stupid now. That was a lot of unlived life he was taking with him.

_There will be other sunsets._

He really had hoped Hanzo would turn out to be right about that one. He tried to call up his face in his mind – how his eyes narrowed when he smiled, the way he tilted his head to the side as he chuckled. That wouldn’t be the worst thought to go out on. Not at all.

With one last deep breath he got to his feet, ready to face the music.

And then -

The yell tore through the air with all the force and vehemence of some giant predator, and with it came a rush of blue-white light that left strange after images on the inside of Jesse’s eyelids. He felt the gust of wind like the warning of the first shock wave after an explosion, and he braced himself but the impact still sent him stumbling a few steps forward as he clutched his hat in place.

That voice had been…

The light whispered through him like a shivery exhale, ruffling his hair and clothes and making him feel briefly released from gravity. He held his arm over his face but the light was everywhere, behind his eyes and inside his chest - over the roar and the hush of it he could hear screams being cut off, the telltale thuds of limp human bodies falling to the floor.

The air smelled like the moment just before a thunderstorm tears the sky open.

He didn’t know if it lasted only a few seconds or if it stretched on from one end of eternity to the next, but then the light was no longer completely blinding, letting him crack his eyes open just a little.

One man still stood upright, surrounded by the bodies of his friends, his face pale as a sheet and his mouth twisted with pure horror, and when his eyes met Jesse’s his hand shot to the holster at his hip - but even half blind and with what sounded like the roar of the ocean in his ears Jesse was still the quicker draw and he’d only ever needed one shot. The revolver fell from his hand and clattered to the floor afterwards, his fingers too slack and lifeless to hold on to it.   

The light had a definite shape, he realized, like some kind of animal… snakes, maybe? He squinted against them to try and make out the details.

Then they swirled around and _looked_ at him.

Not snakes. Dragons. They were two giant, glowing dragons, and he could swear their enormous empty eyes were watching him - not unkindly, but implacable and with an unnerving amount of interest.

“Uh,” he said, mouth dry, ten corpses littering the ground before him, “um… thank you?”

They each tipped their heads to the side, like he was some kind of circus animal that had performed an unexpected trick. One of them stretched forward a little and bumped its… face? snout? against his chest, like it was poking experimentally at him. It wasn’t solid, but it wasn’t quite incorporeal either; he felt a soft touch. It seemed reassured by whatever it sensed, because it pulled back and then both of them dissolved into the air like blue smoke, leaving only the smell of rain.

Everything felt wobbly, like the light had taken all the breath and all the strength in his body with it. He fought to stay on his feet, because that voice - he knew that voice, would have recognized it anywhere.

Sure enough, there were clipped footsteps behind him and then a small thud as someone jumped down to the concrete floor. When he wanted to Hanzo could move like a goddamn shadow; he didn’t seem to be bothering with it right now.

Hanzo’s face was… strange, hard and sharp like an obsidian blade, a look about him like he was prepared to burn the world to the ground and wade through the ashes - and then he saw Jesse swaying unsteadily on his feet and his eyes widened.

“Jesse.”

“Hey,” Jesse said, about to fall face first to the floor. “I was just thinking ‘bout you.”

Hanzo leapt forward to scoop him up before he toppled over, his arms tight around him as he lowered them both to the ground.

 _I am so freaked out right now_ , Jesse thought absently, face pressed against Hanzo’s shoulder. _Light dragons. What the hell. What the_ hell.

“The fuck was that?” Jesse wheezed, trying to sit up and then collapsing back against Hanzo’s chest. Well, that wasn’t the worst place in the world to be. Hanzo cupped his jaw and tilted his head so he could look at Jesse’s face.

“Are you hurt?”

“I… don’t think so.” The life was leaking back into his limbs in increments - he could feel the warmth of Hanzo’s body against him now, as well as the slight tremble in his hands. “I’m not bleedin’ anywhere, anyway. Usually a good sign. Tongue feels kinda numb, though.”

He waited for the reply - something about being thankful for small mercies, maybe - but Hanzo just sighed shakily and gathered him up closer. Jesse fumbled for one of Hanzo’s hands with his own and held on, still dizzy.

“What’re you doing here?” he asked, once the question occurred to him. “Thought you were supposed to be on the other side of the world by now.”

“We have many contacts. Something one of them said made me think that something was wrong.”

“Understatement of the year. What - what _was_ that? With the light?”

“...you should not have seen that.”

“Well, that clears up… exactly nothin’.”

The sound Hanzo made was a little like a gust of laughter, a little like a shudder. “I will tell you later. When I am not… Later.”

“Okay,” Jesse said vaguely, resting against him. He glanced over at the dead bodies. “How come I didn’t get cooked along with the rest of them?”

“Because I - you are...” He stopped, then hugged Jesse closer to him and turned his face into his hair, saying something very quietly in Japanese. Jesse really needed to get himself a translator app or something. He could hear the higgledy-piggledy rhythm of Hanzo’s heartbeat against his ear, though – Jesse closed his eyes.

After a long time he sat up, and Hanzo let him go but kept a hand on his neck, as if he was trying to convince himself the pulse was still there.

“You almost…”

“Yeah. Just almost, though. The devil looks after his own, I guess.” He tried for a smile but Hanzo still looked so lost. Jesse reached out and brushed a stray lock of hair out of his eyes, tucking it behind his ear. “Hey. It worked. You swooped in like that good ol’ Man With No Name and saved my ass.”

“...I have no idea what that is supposed to mean.”

Jesse sighed deeply. “Partner, there are a lot of movies I’m gonna have to make you watch. There’s a culture gap here that makes communication impossible.”

“How are you already joking about this?” Hanzo asked, seemingly half in amusement and half in despair. “You almost _died_.”

Jesse laughed, adrenaline-giddy, and leaned his forehead against Hanzo’s shoulder. He felt like there was still leftover light nestled into every cell in his body. Hanzo cupped the back of his head and rocked them back and forth a little.

“Come here,” he said eventually, sitting back to watch Jesse’s face. He curved his hand around his cheek and rested his thumb on Jesse’s mouth. The laughter immediately dried up in his chest.

“I…”

Hanzo looked at his mouth, breathing very slowly.

Jesse kept completely still, both because he couldn’t remember how to move all of a sudden and because the moment seemed as fragile as a bird’s wing, easily broken by one careless exhale. Then Hanzo leaned forward and touched their mouths together, soft and tentative, and Jesse’s eyes fell shut as he let Hanzo nudge his lips apart with his own, opening them a bit more for the next slide, his breath coming in all askew. His fingers whispered over Hanzo’s chest and curled into his shirt, searching for some kind of purchase. Hanzo breathed against his mouth, then kissed him again, taking Jesse’s bottom lip between both of his and sucking gently. Jesse tilted his head to meet him this time, their noses bumping together, Hanzo’s skin felt warm against the backs of his fingers.

He heard his own name breaking quietly on a breath and the movement returned to him all at once; he surged into it, moaning, clinging to Hanzo because he felt like he would drop out of the sky like a wounded bird if he didn’t.

 _Yes_ , his head chimed, like a bell being struck by air to surface missiles, _yes, fucking_ finally _, thank you, I’ll never ask for anything else ever again, I want -_

Hanzo made a sound in the back of his throat and pushed forward, more demanding, his hand sliding into Jesse’s hair and giving the slightest pull, enough to make Jesse groan out loud and crane into it. Emboldened, Hanzo kissed him deeper, fingers still buried in Jesse’s hair, and he sighed when Jesse wrapped his arms around him and pulled him in as close as he could.

There was a moment of stillness; they both pulled back a little. Jesse rested their foreheads together, listening to the ragged sound of Hanzo breathing. His blood hummed with fireflies.

“Should’ve done that years ago,” he rasped, running his fingers through Hanzo’s hair.

Hanzo brushed his lips over Jesse’s cheek and whispered something he didn’t understand, then kissed him again, seeking out his mouth like a man wandering the desert finally finding a clean spring. Jesse moaned and followed him, unable to let go even though his lungs were begging for air.

“We… we should probably get out of here,” he panted, when he finally managed to tear himself away. “Before people show up and start askin’ a lot of inconvenient questions.”

Hanzo blinked at him, dazed and ruffled - well, as ruffled as he ever got. “...yes. That sounds… yes.”

He got to his feet and offered his hand to Jesse, who took it gratefully because he still felt a little like his limbs had all turned to rubber. Their hands stayed clasped longer than strictly necessary - later, they’d have all the time in the world for that once they got out of here - and Jesse cleared his throat and swept his eyes over the corpse-dotted warehouse floor. He retrieved his gun and returned it safely to the holster, then rested his hands on his hips. How to deal with this mess. He walked over to poke at one of the corpses with the side of his boot. The man’s eyes were wide open, frozen in an expression of bottomless fear, but there didn’t seem to be a single mark on his body to indicate how he’d died. “There’s a coroner out there who’s gonna have one hell of a headache tomorrow.”

Hanzo just grunted dispassionately, straightening his shirt. “If they have any experience with hard light technology they might manage to figure it out, but they could never trace it back to any one individual.”

“We’ll burn the whole place to the ground, then, just to be sure,” Jesse thought out loud, wrapping his sleeve around his hand before picking up one of the men’s guns. He eyed a nearby tank that was marked with a bright yellow hazard sign - highly flammable. Perfect. “Make it look like they fought among themselves and the whole thing got away from them. Hard to get much of anything from them if they’re charred to a crisp.”

“...you do have the occasional bright idea.”

“I try,” Jesse shrugged and emptied the gun into the closest corpse, then picked up another gun and moved on to the next guy, rinse and repeat. “Now help me jerry-rig some sort of remote detonator, if you’d be so kind.”

\---

The blaze of the warehouse was disconcertingly hot, even at a safe distance. It looked kinda cool, actually, the occasional explosion lighting up the windows where the glass had long since been blown out.

Hanzo stood close enough that their shoulders bumped every so often.

“Y’know, I’ve never committed large-scale arson before,” Jesse said thoughtfully, folding his arms. “They’ve gotta be running out of space on the wanted posters by now.”

“Never let anyone say you have no ambition.”

”Mhm. I’d like to be the first person in history to transcend the concept of a bounty.”

”If anyone could...”

The contrast was weird, the heat of the flames in front of them and the chill of the night at their backs. There were sirens in the distance.

Hanzo cleared his throat. ”We should leave.”

”Yeah.” Jesse bit at his bottom lip, glancing at him out of the corner of his eye and seeing his own smile mirrored back at him. “I mean, I’d ask ‘your place or mine’, but I didn’t actually get a room anywhere before comin’ here, so…”

“Come with me,” Hanzo said, nonchalantly grabbing Jesse by his shirtfront for a hard, self-satisfied kiss before dragging him away.

\-------

Hanzo pushed him down into the sheets, kissing his neck light and sweet like the touch of butterfly wings - Jesse wrapped his arms around him, running his hands down his broad back and marvelling at the quiet strength in his shoulders.

There was just enough moonlight in the room to see by, the wooden beams of the ceiling neatly outlined, and Hanzo’s face was sharpened by the contrast but his eyes were soft.

”How the hell did you sit still long enough for this?” Jesse murmured, trailing his fingers down the tattoo that wrapped all the way down Hanzo’s left arm. He’d wondered about that for ages, since he’d seen it for the first time. Hanzo laughed breathlessly and brushed their noses together.

”I could stop right now and explain it to you at length, if you would like.”

His thumb rubbed over Jesse’s nipple and Jesse bit down a moan. ”No, no, please do go on. Don’t mind me.”

Hanzo’s hair fell over his shoulder and tickled Jesse’s chest - he had to reach out and touch it, twining it around his fingers. Hanzo’s eyes slid shut and he turned his face to kiss the inside of Jesse’s wrist.

 _I love you_ , Jesse thought, but he didn’t know if he was allowed to say that yet so instead he kissed him with all the truth he could muster, tangled up in him until he couldn’t tell where he began and where he ended, just that he wanted to be closer. Hanzo made a broken sound into his mouth, his hips rolling down against him and Jesse was helpless; he let his head fall back against the pillow and spread his thighs wider.

All the words in his head flowed away into the feeling of Hanzo’s hair between his fingers, his mouth hot and delicate against Jesse’s, his fingers sneaking down Jesse’s hip and wrapping around his dick – his eyes dark and unwavering as he watched Jesse’s face.

Afterwards Jesse lay with his head pillowed on Hanzo’s shoulder, bewildered like a snowglobe someone had just turned upside down.

Hanzo brushed the backs of his fingers down Jesse’s cheek, pausing at the corner of his mouth. Jesse blinked up at him and felt something that had been meandering around in his chest for a year now – like the slow, inexorable flow of continental drift – settle into place behind his ribs with a final click. He was done for. He was so screwed. He was a stranger in a strange land with no GPS and no ’call a friend’ option. All his cards were on the table and he had nothing up his sleeve.

He’d never been happier about anything.

Hanzo kissed his forehead and stroked his fingers through his hair; Jesse tucked his face into the curve of Hanzo’s neck.

”I’m really glad I didn’t die now.”

”...so am I.”

”Mhm.” The sleepiness and the postcoital dreaminess combined to cut off the landline between Jesse’s good sense and his impulse control. ”You smell nice.”

That bastard was laughing at him. ”It is good to hear you think so.”

”Hey, _you_ reduced me to this. If you make fun of me tomorrow I’m well within my rights to kick you in the shin.”

”I will not, then.”

Jesse thought about the light flowing through him, ten dead bodies, the dragons watching him silently. He’d thought he was alone in there, no one watching his back. He put his arm over Hanzo’s waist and hugged him close.

”I think I’m going to fuck this up,” he said quietly, when he was pretty sure Hanzo was asleep and he couldn’t hold it back anymore. ”Never had a partner before.”

”Neither have I,” Hanzo said, and Jesse felt all the blood drain from his face. ”I suppose we will make it up as we go along.”

He paused.

”I love you,” he added. ”Please remember that before you fling yourself headlong into danger again.”

”Okay,” Jesse said, his throat so dry the words could barely scrape their way out. ”Okay. I will.”

Hanzo found his hand and twined their fingers together. ”I would hate to have to run like a headless chicken all around the world just to get you out of trouble.”

All tension melted out of Jesse’s body; he laughed. ”I’ll try to keep massive screwups to a minimum. Just for you. Since you’re askin’ so nicely.”

”That is all I wanted to hear.”

Jesse fell asleep between one breath and the next, the light still lingering behind his eyes.

 

**Author's Note:**

> If anyone could possibly still be wondering: yeah, I do love the standoff at the end of For A Few Dollars More ha ha
> 
> I’m working under the assumption here that in Overwatch’s semi-sci fi world they have not just thrown in one single case of ‘well j/k it’s magic’. My theory is that the dragons are made with hard light technology - the Shimadas might have had access to it very early on, with their black market contacts. 
> 
> I know that Blizzard has explicitly stated that the game itself is not canon, so the fact that your dragon strike does not hurt your teammates doesn’t really mean anything - but I feel like the ability to choose who the dragons affect so you don’t accidentally fry people on your own side sounds logical. (*Mordin Solus voice* sharp inhale - alternative impractical.) Otherwise you’d need an enormous, empty line of sight on your enemies to use it. So maybe Hanzo’s hard light emitters are embedded in his tattoo and they have some kind of… idk brain chips or something that give them limited control of the dragons? I just don’t know, you guys, I’m bullshitting as I go along here ha ha


End file.
